


Pancakes

by BreeZ_Claire



Series: As Days Go By [2]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bromance, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-16
Updated: 2013-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-25 16:59:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/641120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BreeZ_Claire/pseuds/BreeZ_Claire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some flashbacks and reflection over a pancake breakfast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pancakes

Merlin typed away on his keyboard, trying hard to retain all the thoughts pouring in from nowhere and everywhere.

The stories, the plots, the characters and their dialogues were all too much for him and his head was beginning to spin slightly. But he knew he had to get down as much as he could or else he’d lose it all the moment he let himself fall asleep. He spent all day taking calls in Arthur’s office and organising the man’s schedule for the coming Monday so by the time he left the office he was exhausted from the continuous action. Arthur had left work early for some function Merlin didn’t bother asking about, which meant he’d be heading home alone. When he reached the door to his flat, he half expected the blasting of music and the bright flashes of disco ball lights. So he braced himself before opening the door…

To a silent room.

Merlin turned on the lights and looked around. Everything was still in its proper place. The large leather couches and loveseats were empty and clean, the tables were still in one piece, no drunken bodies lay sprawled on the floor, no beer cans or other munchies littered the fireplace, no undergarments hung from the ceiling fans, the overly large HD plasma screen TV was damage free, no plants were overturned, and no large group of men and women were grinding to the techno roar coming from the ceiling-high speakers. The apartment was empty and silent for the first time in weeks.

“Oh thank Shakespeare!” Merlin could’ve melted to the floor in euphoria right then and there and screamed to the heavens in a way that would’ve made Andy Dufesne proud. He was only guilty of one of the two before he skipped into the kitchen to fetch himself a late dinner. He had just placed his grilled cheese and ham on the pan before spotting a number of yellow sticky notes on the kitchen counter:

 

_Went out to celebrate Leon’s birthday. Don’t wait up._

_-Arthur_

_Victoria Secret party. Won’t be back till late if at all!_

_Gwaine_

_Staying at Gwen’s tonight, see you tomorrow! Lance._

Merlin smiled as he tossed out the sticky notes. Maybe he could finally get a proper night of peace and quite. _TGIF for sure._ He flipped the sandwich onto a plate, grabbed a glass of water and made his way upstairs to his room. He finished his dinner and checked his email before a familiar feeling washed over him. Just as he thought, the moment he began settling in and felt the urge to hit the hay, the ideas started coming to him. He immediately opened up a new word document on his laptop and started typing anything and everything that came to him.

This had happened to him enough times that he knew how to predict and induce these moments. Between his rushed mornings and busy afternoon and evenings, Merlin barely had time for his body to stop let alone let his mind wander. One particularly stressful day he got home at around three in the morning and practically passed out in bed. Just before he dozed off however, he started picturing situations and words flowed through him like magic (no pun intended).

He had never gotten such great writing done before he came upon this realization so he decided to keep the rule: keep your mind busy during the day and let it wander at night. Except when there were parties keeping him from concentrating… which were a lot of nights. So when the opportunity such as an empty apartment presented itself to him, Merlin welcomed it with open arms.

He typed swiftly well into the night and didn’t even register when the sun peaked over the horizon. The screen was now filled with thirty-some pages of mythology and medieval adventures of a young prince and Merlin still had ideas popping up left and right. His hands were beginning to cramp up but he couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. It was only when the last few words were typed on the screen that Merlin allowed himself to sip the last few drops of his water. He let out a long, satisfied sigh before leaning back in his chair and letting sleep wash over him.

**xXx**

**_BANG! BANG! BANG!_ **

“Merlin, wake up!” Arthur slammed his fist against the door. He wasn’t alone.

The boy groaned in protest and kept his eyes shut, willing the voices to go away.

“Yeah Merlin, I told Percy here that you make a fine batch of pancakes so hurry on out here and make us some!” Gwaine and Percival had a fondness of food that Merlin would never understand.

“Hi Merlin, could I have blueberries in mine?”

“Chocolate-chip for me please. Oh and Gwen’s coming over later by the way!” Lance’s smile was obvious in his voice.

“Now get your ass out of bed before I drag you out myself you lazy oaf and make us some food!”

“Merlin?”

“Come out Merlin!”

 “Please Merlin?”

“ _Mer_ -lin!”

Merlin slammed his head against his desk and groaned, “I hate my life.”

**_xXx_ **

_Hi there, it’s Merlin. I hope you lot are having a better morning than I am. You’d think by now these three prats would know how to make themselves breakfast but no, God forbid they have to worry themselves with making food when they could easily buy a chef to do it for them. You heard me,_ buy a chef _. That’s how rich these wankers are. But from the moment they found out I could cook (something my mother taught me) they started asking me to cook for them whenever possible. And yes, 3am munchies are included in that ‘whenever possible’ timeslot._

**_xXx_ **

Merlin poured the last of the batter onto the hot pan and downed his eighth coffee that morning. When the three –and Percy—managed to get him out of bed, he refused to make any food until they got some coffee into him. It was around his fifth cup that he began feeling mildly awake again so he started mixing the batter for pancakes. He made three types: blueberries for Percy, chocolate-chip for Lance, and plain for Arthur and Gwaine.

“Alright, this is the last batch and then I’m going back to sleep.” He let out a yawn and almost fell over due to his lack of consciousness and the unbalanced weight caused by the iron pan. When the four laughed, Merlin was reminded of what it felt like to take care of a group of two-year olds. “Oh sod off, I had a late night. And it’s Saturday.”

“So that explains why someone’s a little grumpy today,” Gwaine was the first to fork the pancakes onto his plate. Percy reached in at the same time and the two began battling it out for the last bits of breakfast – at this point it didn’t matter what kind they were anymore.

“Wake up on the wrong side of the table did you?” Arthur didn’t look up from his newspaper but Merlin could hear the smirk in his voice.

“Oh shut up you dollophead.” He rolled his eyes are turned back to put the pan in the sink. As he rinsed the metal with water he felt a body close behind him and a voice in his ear.

“What did you just say?” Arthur growled.

He felt his ears heat up, “Umm…nothing?”

“I thought so,” and instantly the body was gone allowing Merlin to breath again. “You know, for a boy without a penny to his name, you sure have a mouth on you.”

“I’m sure it comes in handy sometimes.” Gwaine gave Merlin a wink and the others laughed. Merlin just rolled his eyes and grabbed another coffee. He was glad that his roommates didn’t have a problem with him liking other men…and women for that matter. When the topic came up, Merlin wasn’t quite sure how to explain the idea of pansexuality to them but Arthur and Lance simply shrugged and said it didn’t matter to them and Gwaine agreed. It was one of the few qualities he was grateful for in his flatmates but it was something that meant a lot to him. It meant that he wasn’t burdened with keeping another secret from them. Although with the other secret, keeping it under wraps required a little more conscious work because it was second nature to him.

It was a small thing, not even requiring a second thought. It was a rainy Sunday morning and Merlin had just come down for a cup of coffee. After he poured himself a cup, the phone rang.

The next hour consisted of Gwen shrieking to him about how the caterers used indigo icing instead of lavender, the photographer cancelled, the band had just broke up and she couldn’t find a replacement because Lance had really wanted them, and about another hundred-and-one reasons why the wedding would be a disaster. By the time he miraculously calmed her down and hung up, his coffee had gone cold. Too lazy to put it in the microwave, Merlin just whispered a few words and the liquid started to boil again. All was good in life, except that Lance had walked in and caught the entire act.

“Merlin…”

“L-Lance...” Merlin almost dropped his cup, his heart was pounding.

“Did you just…make the coffee boil with only your words?”

“Umm…maybe…?”

“Oh.” The doctor nodded slowly. After a few minutes of continuous, mechanical nodding, he finally walked out of the kitchen only to return and leave a few more times before making the final decision to stay. “But how is that possible?” He waved his hand around and furrowed his brow.

“I…umm…just…can.” Merlin tried pathetically. He felt like he was sitting on pins and needles. He hated that look on Lance’s face and he cursed himself again and again for not being more careful. “I…can kind of…do magic.”

“Huh…” He nodding, “fascinating…” And nodded some more.

“What’s fascinating?” Gwaine yawned and sauntered in, clad only in a pair of Calvin Klein boxer briefs.

“Merlin’s a magician.” Lance offered, surprisingly chipper than he’d been two seconds ago.

“I though he was a writer.”

“I’m not a magician, I’m a warlock!” When the two turned to stare at him, he just melted onto the table and wished he’d never been born. _Oh let this be a dream, please let this be a very very very very bad dream._

“He heated up his cup of coffee using only words.” Lance curled his finger under his chin, “it’s quite interesting really. This goes against everything I’ve ever learned in my years of studying science and the human body.” He looked up, “Can you do other things Merlin?”

“Like pull a bunny out of his hat?” Gwaine crunched on an apple and scratched his belly. Lance just shushed him and turned back to the very curled up figure in a chair at the table.

“C’mon Merlin, please, could you do something else?”

Merlin looked up into Lance’s expectant face. “Err…” when Lance said please a few more (hundred) times he gingerly lifted his hand to draw the liquid out of his cup and began maneuvering the coffee in circles.

“Holy shit you _are_ magic!” Gwaine spat out apple pieces.

“Amazing.” Lance shook his head is disbelief. It was then that Merlin was bombarded with a range of questions anywhere from ‘could I have someone perform a CAT scan on you?’ to ‘could you help me pick up girls with that magic trick?’ and Merlin was just about ready to throw himself under a bus when none other then Arthur stepped into the kitchen dressed a white T-shirt and jeans.

“What’s going on here?” he raised an eyebrow to the three men huddled close together at the end of the table. Lance and Gwaine told him the ‘events’ that took place that morning and pressured Merlin into another degrading display of magic. He conjured a small flame in the palm of his hand and held it out for all of them to see. Gwaine swore a few more times in awed disbelief and Lance just looked at Merlin like he was the Santa Claus of science…but not really. After a long pause, Arthur threw up his hands.

“Great. So where the hell was this when our power went out last weekend and we stumbled around the house looking like idiots trying to find a flashlight when you could’ve just done that! Good job Merlin, thank you. I had to limp around with a stubbed toe for nothing.” He stalked up the stairs. Merlin rolled his eyes and sighed, he should’ve expected a reaction like this from Arthur. Really, how self-involved could some people be?

After that incident, things went back to normal for the most part. They went on with their daily lives like nothing ever happened. On occasion Lance would try to ask Merlin for a blood sample and Gwaine would ask him to be his wingman for the night in order to pick up some girls and Arthur would tease him from time to time, but all in all their relationship as flatmates didn’t change.

He supposed the whole ‘being a pansexual’ thing wasn’t as big of a surprise after coming out of the warlock’s closet. It was hard for him to admit it sometimes, but living with Gwaine, Arthur, and Lance wasn’t as bad as he led others to believe.

“Merlin, I’m still hungry.” Gwaine pouted from his chair, “Make me some egg why don’t you?”

“Oh yes, me too please.” Lance held his plate up and Percy did the same.

“Me three!”

“And keep them coming.” Arthur waved his hand in a circular motion, not even looking up from his newspaper.

But mostly they drove him insane.


End file.
